Listing on CanadianISP itself is a free promotional effort. In addition, the "Blurb" feature in the ISP detail page accepts full HTML, allowing you to further customize your message and branding image on CanadianISP.

No, we do not.

This depends on the product or service. Given the time demands of running CanadianISP and my other projects, there are a few rules on product and service reviews:

• If it is a product, it will be sent to CanadianISP for review and kept, permanently. I.e. you will gift/donate it in exchange for the review.
• If it is a service, you will provide one year of the service at no charge.
• Reviews will be posted as a separate page, with a link to it from the home page, as well as any other page we deem appropriate.
• The review will be sent to you prior to posting and you may choose to have it posted or not - Regardless, the year of service or gifted product remains with CanadianISP
• You may make suggestions for style of the review, but not editorial content.

Most of the advertising services are geared towards ISPs. However, the ad serving software has been modified in the past to serve non-ISP promoters. That being said, however, we want to keep all content on canadianisp.ca relevant to our readers. Ads for adult, gambling, money-making schemes, etc, are banned outright. Ads for completely unrelated products and services are also unlikely to find a place within CanadianISP (Besides, there are a lot better places to advertise cars, power tools, etc than here) As always, the final decision as to what is permitted on canadianisp.ca resides with us.

This depends on what you are trying to do. Here are a few guidelines, though:

• For ISPs, the Purchased Rankings work best: Why ? Because they guarantee your ISP will be displayed in the top screen of every search in which you would turn up. This is critical in heavily served urban areas where the results list may be several screens in length.
• The purchased rank in the ISPSpotlight brings your ISP first to mind, right on the home page, before any search is done - In other words, before your relevant competitors are seen.
• The Side Banners (Skyscrapers) are the next most effective method, simply because they are right beside the data that the users are looking at. Skyscrapers give you more space to deliver a bigger message in a more colorful and eye-catching format.
• Top and bottom banners are best used in the long term where name recognition and brand awareness are more important than the immediacy of clickthroughs. (This is why top banners were lowered in price to half that of skyscrapers)
• Must See ISP allows you to change the background colour of your listing in the search results page. This is a great option when your budget does not allow for purchased ranking but you still want to stand out in the results list. Given that the display order is random, your ISP listing still has a random chance of appearing in the first screen, where it will stand out (And for users who scroll through the whole list, it stands out equally well against all the others)
• Text Under ISP is a great tool for making your ISP not only stand out a little from the rest of the pack, but allows you to deliver a short text message to entice a user to click on your ISP over your competitors right away (Ex, "$19.95 DSL special during the summer" could appear right below your ISP name in the results list)
• Icon in Search allows you to add an animated GIF or a JPG to your inline search results listing, attracting the eye of the viewer, over and above those in the list, even those ranked highr than your ISP.
• Provincial Entry Page Banner is a good tool for the advertiser who wants to appear before a user goes to the results page.
• Email campaigns are available on a very limited/restricted basis to be broadcast to the ISPs on canadianisp.ca. Generally, information must be relevant to an ISP owner in order for it to be accepted. In addition, we limit mail broadcasts to ISPs to no more than 6 per month. If you are the seventh mail broadcaster, your broadcast will have to wait until the following month to be sent. Email broadcasts to the ISPs must be paid up front, the email may be text-only and final approval rests with us. We will do our best to let you know if we think you have a chance of getting a response to your campaign: If you sell a widget that all ISP really would like to have, but it costs $5,000 and doesn't generate sales or save massive amounts of time or money, we'll tell you that you are likely wasting your time and ad money. Under no circumstances to we release contact names or email addresses to email advertisers. You will receive a list of ISP names and their URLs that the email broadcast was sent to. ISPs will respond to you directly, if they choose to respond at all. If these conditions are not acceptable to your firm, email marketing through CanadianISP is not an option for you.

Top Banners: 452 x 58 Gif or JPG - Animated gifs are acceptable (see below)
Skyscrapers: 120 x 500 Gif or JPG - Animated gifs are acceptable (see below)

Your banner content is up to you. Yes, the sizes are custom to CanadianISP, but I want the site to remain unique and thus so should the advertisements. While we do not generally restrict content on the banners, we do ask that the colour scheme not clash too badly with canadianisp.ca. Animated gifs are okay, but don't do anything like making a banner that flashes red, orange and yellow at 15 cycles a second. Quality of image is important, but so are decent download times - please optimize your ads!

No. We do not make available any names or direct contact information given to canadianisp.ca. Don't ask, because the answer will still be no.

No. Hey, I'm human - some of the ad services are automated, some of them are manual - if I've forgotten to turn off your campaign after a paid run, then that extra time is yours, free.

The short answer: Maybe.
The long answer: Here is how it works: CanadianISP is very thankful to our regular advertisers: It is in no small part due to you that CanadianISP has continued to expand and improve. Obviously, CanadianISP is a business: Not only do we wish to operate at a profit, but we wish to remain fair in our service offerings to all ISPs, so the following is the policy should an already occupied spot in the guaranteed ranking be desireable to another ISP:

An ISP B wants position #5, which is occupied by ISP A with a one-year contract. ISP B may only ask for that spot within three months of the end of ISP A's contract. For example, if ISP A starts a one year contract on January 1, 2014, ISP B may not request ISP A's spot until October 1, 2014 for a January 1, 2015 start date.

Three months prior to the renew date, ISP A is informed that another ISP wishes their spot; ISP A, as an existing customer, can choose to renew their contract with payment due immediately (Yes, three months early). If they refuse, ISP B may then take their spot, as long as they pay immediately (Again, three months early).

We feel this is a fair approach to long-term, highly-desirable spots in the guaranteed ranking system while also paying respect to existing customers and their spots.

It's not going to happen. I have had, literally, hundreds of offers for the above over the years. While I absolutely realize the value in such propositions, they do devalue the advertisements of other ISPs on the site simply due to the fact that ALL the ISPs would then be running banners, coloured backgrounds, Text Under ISP and so on, if they only had to pay when a conversion was successfully made.

While that may sound a little unfair, consider: CPA puts the entirety of the risk onto the medium (I.e. CanadianISP, in this case) - It also makes assumptions on the ISPs' end that I have no control over: Despite years of newsletters, guides, suggestions and how-to's: Some ISPs still have crappy websites that actually deter customers from signing up: I'm not going to squander ad space on companies that won't benefit from it and who will take away from those that make the effort.

At the end of the day, the vast majority of ISPs who choose to advertise on CanadianISP find that the advertisements pay for themselves. With a 50% discount for first time advertisers for any contract with any combination of services of up to six months, that is more than enough of an incentive (and savings) to determine if this is the right promotional vehicle for you.

You will also find that we are active partners in your advertising efforts: We do not simply take your money and wait until renewal to ask you for more: We actively monitor your ads, your detail views, clickthroughs and feedback and make suggestions and observations if we think your performance should be better.